The Hastings Center is the oldest independent, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary research institute of its kind in the world. The author’s approach regarding our responsibility in a pandemic is frequently referenced as the “fair Innings” argument. Elders have had more “innings” in…

“I’m going to have to make a decision, and I only hope to God that it’s the right decision,” President Trump said on Friday during his daily news briefing on the fight against the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more…

Scores of Americans are in critical condition from the Covid-19 virus and so is our country. Covid-19 has eviscerated New York City and marches toward other urban areas across the United States. Dire predictions of anywhere from 100,000-240,000 US deaths…

The news media are not the best source for scholarly thinking around the allocation of scarce resources. Hyper-ventilating commentators who trigger hysteria about rationing do not allow for a productive discussion that helps the general public understand how healthcare professionals…

Rather than writing about how we have confronted the issues of medical triage and rationing in our lifetime, I thought it would be meaningful to reprint a 2016 New York Times article that coalesced the various responses from the lay…

Craig Klugman, Ph.D., professor of bioethics and health humanities at DePaul University, recently published the following definition of triage. Triage is a process for determining which patients will receive limited resources in a time of scarcity. The patients who are…

It is mid-March 2020. James is a 29-year-old junior doctor working in a London hospital. Last week, James cared for a man who had become sick after returning from abroad. The man had been treated in isolation and is now…

There are more than 250,000 people in the U.S. at the end stages of heart failure. Of those about 15% are in critical need of a heart transplant. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) tightly regulates organ transplant…

Bioethicists frequently deal with extraordinarily messy situations that also involve the courts. One might ask why an ethicist would write about a case of divorce, IVF, donor eggs and transgender transition. Nonetheless, these are all wrapped up in one hotly…

This past summer, the Obama administration tripled the cap on the number of opioid-addicted patients that an authorized physician can treat with buprenorphine/naloxone (Suboxone), a drug that eases the effects of withdrawal from prescription opioids and heroin and markedly decreases…